After the shocking conclusion to the series premiere, fans were clamouring for the second episode of HBO’s Lanterns, eagerly awaiting a follow-up to that ending. With all the jumping around this show is going to be doing, fans may be waiting a few more weeks to figure out what happened to dear ol’ Hal Jordan. For now, we’ve got bigger fish to fry…or should I say androids?
Mogo Doesn’t Socialize
Primarily taking place in 2016, we pick right back up into Lantern Lessons with Professor Jordan, tasking John with taking off and flying. John is only able to manage a simple construct of a small bird. Jordan makes a change of plans: since John wasn’t able to fly with the ring, he sticks him on a plane and tasks him with travelling to Coast City, the canonical home of Hal Jordan, to retrieve the physical lantern to recharge the ring, oh, and also…feed Earl. Just to add a nice little cherry on top, he charges John with maintaining the bird construct throughout his journey.
He arrives in Coast City to Hal Jordan’s gigantic, bare Mansion, with Jordan saying some rich guy bought it for him after saving his son. John calls Hal to unlock the “safe” to get the Lantern, revealing a pocket dimension, a DCU staple at this point. Hal unlocks it for him with a voice recognition program and the password “Mogo Doesn’t Socialize.” The saying is a reference to Alan Moore’s Green Lantern #188 because Mogo is actually a sentient planet that became a Green Lantern, meaning his size bars him from attending Lantern meetings.
Retrieving the Lantern and one of Hal’s old super suits. Of course, John doesn’t forget to feed Hal’s precious Earl, revealed to be a large, carnivorous alien plant that nearly takes John’s hand off.
Hal Jordan Investigates Rushville
His day off from “teaching,” that is. While John is off running errands for the big grouch, Hal continues the investigation he’s yet to prove his jurisdiction over. Nevertheless, he does as he pleases, the classic Hal Jordan way. Starting at the football field to find metal detectors that…don’t work, off to a town hall meeting with more detectors that…don’t work, and a room full of angry citizens.
With a depleted ring, Hal is mostly on his own and has to do things the old-fashioned way. So naturally, he retrieves the corpses of the victims from the shooting at the morgue, loads them into his car and takes them to the football field. That is where he discovers what those detectors were really for: detecting who in the population was human, and who wasn’t.
He’s eventually found by Sheriff Kane while heading to Macon Ranch to question William Macon, and upon arrival and imminent refusal to leave, is shot by a sniper and sent to the hospital. Upon his departure with Sheriff Kane, Jordan quickly notices the hospital’s occupancy is at zero, and that most of the equipment is still wrapped up. Hal questions this, but Sheriff Kane brushes it off as it being a small town where no one really gets hurt.
John Stewart Learns About the Manhunters
Leaving Coast City, John is attacked and kidnapped by a group of aliens claiming to be survivors of the Manhunter purges. These aliens, led by Antaan, claim one of the predecessors of the Lanterns is lurking in Rushville. These aliens stamp John’s mind with the painful memories of these massacres and task him with finding the Manhunter within 48 hours.
John wastes no time informing Hal of what had transpired and the revelation that these Lanterns may be up against a Manhunter, something that seems to even shock Jordan. What also shocks Hal is the fact that the little bird is still chirping alongside John, questioning its importance if he was able to maintain it for so long.
Why Does Hal Jordan Visit Sinestro?
In the final moments, we see Hal suit up in the tie he claimed to abandon long ago and blast off into the night. We see him arrive on a strange planet and make his way through a long corridor before reaching a cell housing Sinestro, one of the Lanterns’ strongest who’d been locked away for killing a guardian. Jordan wants Sinestro to tell him everything he knows about the Manhunters, but all Sinestro wants to talk about is John Stewart.
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